Monday, August 18, 2008

First Chapters Grows in The UK

Dial a Book which owns First Chapters has announced the addition of a major UK partner in Gardners. DAB will be licencing all 210,000 first chapter files to Gardners for their use with their publishing and retail partners. From the press release:

Dial-A-Book Inc, the largest creator and distributor of book text excerpts in the United States and Gardners Books Ltd., the largest book wholesaler in the United Kingdom, have announced a joint book excerpt distribution program.

The excerpts of US books which Gardners will distribute in the UK and throughout the world contain full bibliographic data, tables of contents and five to nine pages on initial text.

"Gardners are pleased to bring this invaluable sample material, which has reviously only been available within the USA, to retailers, librarians and book buyers, through our Digital Warehouse. Giving professional book buyers in retail and libraries, and consumers buying on our customers retail websites, access to sample content prior to purchase will greatly enrich their buying decision." said Bob Jackson, Commercial Director of Gardners Books Ltd.

Stanley R. Greenfield, President of Dial-A-Book Inc. indicated that the extended distribution of this book data will means more widespread sales of US works in the global marketplace.

1 comment:

Nice article. Interesting to see alternative means for fiction dissemination gaining popularity. This month fellow UEA Creative Writing MA author Emily Bullock and I signed up to an unprecedented internet pubishing scheme. Backed by the Arts Council, youwriteon.com is planning to publish 5,000 books for free before Christmas 2008.

Given the role the internet has played in launching recording artists such as Sandi Thom and The Arctic Monkeys, it's great to see the literary world catching up.

Michael Cairns

I enjoy discussing the publishing industry and in particular the changes that impact the business. On PND, I don't write about everything, just the things that interest me.

My career spans a wide range of publishing and information products, services and B2B categories and my operating and consulting experience has largely been with brand-name companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, AARP, R.R. Bowker and Wolters Kluwer.

I have served as a board member of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and in addition to my responsibilities at R.R. Bowker, l also served as Chairman of the International ISBN Executive Committee.